The history of Sinai begins with the Exodus story. Sinai was the desert wilderness crossed by Moses and the Hebrews to the promised land. More recently, the peninsula has become a focal point in the wars between Israel and its neighbors. In the 1956 Suez crisis, Israel briefly captured Sinai, but withdrew shortly after. Again, it was captured in the 1967 Six Day War. This time Israel held on to Sinai, along with the West Bank, East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights, and the Gaza Strip. As in the other territories, Israelis began to form settlements in the newly conquered areas. Unlike its other spoils of war, however, the Sinai wouldn't remain under Israeli control for long. Sinai was the site of fierce fighting in the 1973 Yom Kippur war, and although the Egyptian invasion was ineffectual at best, control was ceded back to Egypt in the Henry Kissinger brokered peace deal. Some Israeli settlers were less than enthusiastic about this turn of events and had to be forcibly removed from their settlements by the IDF. By 1982, Egypt was back in control.

Since then, Sinai has remained Egyptian, and, given the stability of the region, surprisingly peaceful. Egypt now strives to develop the area, both to exploit the natural resources and to solidify its control of the region.